Page 12 of Devil in the Details

A small placard had been placed just inside the lobby. Tournament sign-ups this way, it said, and had an arrow pointing toward a hallway off to the right.

Well, at least it looked as if they were organized.

Another sign was posted on the wall next to a meeting room near the end of the corridor. Sign-ups here!

People weren’t lined up out the door or anything close to it, but there was still a small queue waiting to fill out their paperwork. Caleb had wondered why the casino didn’t simply allow online sign-ups, since it seemed as if that would have been a lot simpler. As he watched, though, he saw the woman who was processing the paperwork take a man’s driver’s license over to a copy machine nearby and scan it, telling him they wanted to make sure they were properly vetting everyone who entered.

There were three people ahead of him, so it took about five minutes for him to get to the table. “Signing up for the tournament?” the woman asked politely. She looked as if she was in her early forties, slim and attractive. Maybe she’d worked as a cocktail waitress or a dealer here before she moved up into management.

Caleb couldn’t think of any other reason why someone would be standing in line in this obscure meeting room unless they wanted to register for the competition, but he only smiled back at the woman. “Yes,” he said.

“Just a couple of things,” she replied, and pushed a piece of paper toward him. “We need your name, address, and phone number, and a copy of your driver’s license or other ID.”

He’d already been anticipating all that, so he pulled out his wallet and handed over his license so she could take a scan of it while he was filling out the rest of the paperwork. She headed back to the copy machine, and they synced up well enough that he was just finishing scrawling out his signature as she approached to return his license.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before,” she said, gaze almost appraising as she looked him up and down. “New in town?”

Although he was plenty used to women looking at him like that, he didn’t get many who had to be at least ten years older than he was, maybe more.

“New to poker tournaments,” he said easily. “But I’m a fast learner.”

Her dark eyes glinted at him. “I’m sure you are.”

Luckily, Caleb couldn’t really linger, not with more people queued up behind him, so he gave her a casual nod and walked back into the hallway. A tall, heavyset man with thinning light brown hair who also looked as if he was in his forties — although closer to fifty than otherwise — stood there, apparently absorbed in whatever he was reading on his phone’s screen. As Caleb approached, though, the man put the phone in his pocket and sent him a friendly smile.

“First time, huh?” he said, and Caleb paused.

“You heard that?”

“I have sharp ears,” the man said, then extended a hand. “Hank Bowers. I’ve been doing this for a while, and I thought I knew most of the people who play in the Desert Paradise tournaments.”

“Caleb Lowe,” he responded, glad that after three months of giving people that fake name, he was mostly used to saying it rather than the one he’d been born with. “And yeah, I’m a newbie. But my friends kept telling me I should try a tournament one of these days, and then I saw the ad on TV for this one and thought, why not?”

“You picked a good tournament,” Hank replied. “Lots of great players here, but the overall atmosphere is a lot more low-key than some of the big-money competitions.” He paused there, still wearing the easy smile of a man completely at home in his surroundings. In his polo shirt and khaki slacks, he could have come straight off the golf course, and a tan that was probably in place all year ’round only reinforced that impression. “Did you get a brochure from Lauren?”

Caleb shook his head. “Is she the gal who’s registering the players?”

“The very one,” Hank said. “We’ve been pretty slammed today — a lot of people like to wait until the last minute to sign up — so it probably slipped her mind. I’ll go grab you one.”

Before Caleb was able to say that he could fetch the brochure, Hank had already headed over to the meeting room they were using as a registration station and come back with a nicely printed four-color leaflet.

“Here you go,” he said. “Most of it is pretty straightforward stuff, but if you’ve never played in a tournament before or have watched too many of them on TV, then it would probably be helpful for you to read it over before the first elimination round starts on Thursday.”

Considering that was four days from now, Caleb didn’t think he’d have too hard a time reading and absorbing the information the brochure contained. It wasn’t as if Hank had handed him a copy of War and Peace or something. “Thanks,” he replied. “How many players have signed up?”

“I think we’re around eighty or so,” he said. “We don’t have anyone feeding in from satellites, though, because the buy-in for this tournament isn’t high.”

Caleb had read enough about how poker tournaments worked that he knew “satellites” were simply smaller competitions with lower buy-ins that would feed people into the larger, higher-stakes tournaments. “Does this competition feed into bigger ones?”

“Nope,” Hank said cheerfully. “It’s more of a standalone, just-for-fun kind of event. That’s what makes it more approachable to people who’re getting started, like you.”

Well, at least the older man hadn’t called him a rank amateur. True, Caleb had never formally competed, but those months he’d spent gathering funds for his new life here in Las Vegas had given him plenty of intel on how to get by at a poker table.

Except for the part where he’d used his demonic powers to ensure that he always came out ahead.

Even so, he knew a lot about poker and the rules of the various games than he had three months ago. He’d do fine.

“Good to know,” he said. “Anyway, I need to get going — I still have some errands I need to run. See you on Thursday.”

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